the account of the ring's first inhabitant to a glaive
by binaryShenanigans
Summary: nyx ulric was given a strange job as "punishment" for wearing the ring of the lucii with no regard to his filthy commoner blood: to be sentinel and messenger of the ring itself until the ring is no longer needed as ordained by the prophecy of the astrals, and only then will he be released into the afterlife to be free.


"Aw, Six - Y'know, I've been wondering, actually - what did you think when you just... Went to sleep, and woke up here?"

It was an interesting question Nyx Ulric, the sentinel of the Ring of the Lucii asked the Founder King. They'd been bonding the past few days, now that the awkward 'initiation' had passed, now that Nyx had established himself as an ally to the poor man - so why should Somnus feel that Nyx didn't deserve an answer? It was harmless enough of a question, after all. Somnus was not afraid of being dead anymore, it was far from a sensitive topic to the man who'd been dead for more than ten generations.

Somnus ran one thin, pale hand through his hair, as Nyx had learned he tended to do while in thought.

"I thought... Believe it or not, my first thought was that I was dreaming," he said, eyes heavy-lidded as always, the faint flicker of fascination in them so brief that not even the budding Somnus-Expert, Nyx, would have noticed.

"Yeah?" The Glaive simply leaned in from where he was sitting, cross-legged, at the foot of Somnus' bed.

(That was a great honor, you know - to be allowed to sit on the frozen-hearted, standoffish Founder King's bed.)

"Mm," Somnus hummed, nodding slowly. Everything he did was so slow and heavy - deliberate, if you've got a kind interpretation of him, "You see, lucid dreaming comes very easily to me."

"Uh-huh," said Nyx, nodding, brows furrowing a bit with interest. He's just realized where Somnus' strange accent comes from - it seems obvious as a realization, but the Somnus and the earliest Kings of Lucis lived in a time when the Lucians had a great deal of Tenebraen blood in them - Somnus, then, is Lucian only in name. He was the first Lucian, one could say - but his blood is Tenebraean. That's where that enchanting, posh accent comes from.

Somnus, looking down at his lap - he rarely gave anyone direct eye contact - went on, "So when I woke up in this strange room, in this... White castle, where it is always night, it didn't seem very out of place in a dream. Being able to get up and walk around has always been within my range of - dreaming capabilities, if you will. So I... I suppose for a while, yes - I thought it had to be a dream.

His eyes turned to the window. "Even when I found I could not leave this place, I still didn't think to question it. It seemed like rather plausible 'dream logic'."

"Or nightmare logic," Nyx chuckled.

Meeting at least Nyx's face, if not his eyes, Somnus replied, "Nightmares don't take place in castles, Nyx Ulric." What he remembered was bare, splintered, wooden walls, rooms full of more dust than oxygen, where the only light was that spilling out from the window, creating such a hazy environment it could give you a headache. That's what he remembered, though all that was more years ago than he could explain with a number.

"Well, maybe not for you, they don't," Nyx said with an uneasy smile. What he remembered was the fall of Insomnia. The interesting part was that what he remembered the most clearly, what kept him up at night - or anytime he tried to sleep within the ring, as there was no such thing as daytime here - was the screaming. It was unlike anything he'd ever heard - it wasn't even like the sorts of noises he heard on the battlefield. Yeah, the screaming you hear in movies? That's nothing like the real thing, Nyx learned that the hard way.

Rubbing at his stubbled chin a little, Nyx then asked, "... But what made you realize it wasn't?"

Somnus stopped to think again, to plan his words.

"It simply went on so long, I had to start thinking at some point - 'You know, I'm really very old, aren't I?'" And Somnus actually laughed. It was brief and mirthless, but it was a laugh, so Nyx was captivated by it all the same, "'Wouldn't it be funny if I just - passed on in my sleep?' And, well - by this point, after this long, seeing my son and then my grandson and - all our descendants join me, I have no reason to assume this is anything but death."

Nyx nodded, and said "I hope you don't mind all the questions, I'm just - tryin' to make sense of what it was like in here."

"Oh, not at all," Somnus said, closing his eyes and shaking his head, "I'm actually wide awake right now, so I don't mind this little chat one bit."

"Alright, cool," Nyx sighed, relieved he wasn't being too much of an annoying little shit. "So I guess next what I was thinking, was - it couldn't've been fun up here all by yourself, I mean..."

"It was certainly very lonely," said the Founder King, pinning some of his long, wavy hair behind one ear. "But I have to say I didn't mind it too terribly. It wasn't what I feared, which was - eternal solitude. You- you know I like my privacy, but I don't think anyone could take an eternity without seeing another face. I think anyone would lose their mind if they had to suffer such a fate. I thought that's what was happening to me, you see - I simply thought this was the afterlife, I didn't realize I was inside of a magical ring, not until I felt this... Familiar, kind warmth. Yes - that feeling lasted a good... Few decades, I believe. Four, maybe five, something like that, until I woke up from a deep sleep to hear a knock at the door of this very bedroom. And, when I answered, I saw my... Son. Standing right there."

Nyx noticed a subtle change in Somnus' face. His eyelids were... Fluttering just a bit quicker than usual, his lips tighter than they tended to be when speaking.

"And I... I don't know how else to say this, I simply broke down," he said, breaking into an unsteady, strange smile, "I... Cried like a little boy into my son's shoulders, it's- it's a little overwhelming to recall, even now, it always - gets me - but I just. He was there."

Nyx's eyes widened as he heard Somnus gently sniffle right in front of him, as if on the verge of being on the verge of tears. That was something truly special, he thought. He never imagined Somnus to be the kind of man to cry, not with all of the lying down and sleeping and hopeless staring he spends his days doing. He supposed at this point, then, that it stands to logic that every man is the kind of man to cry, it's just that every man has different buttons that have to be pushed before he gets there.

"I suppose that's how I found out," Somnus said, trying to steady himself, "That I was not cursed to an eternity of loneliness. And that this was, I guess, a sort of... Tomb. That's how I came to think of it, this place was a family tomb. I was... So happy to figure this out, I didn't know what was happening. I don't think I'd ever known happiness like that while I was alive, without anything weighing it down. It was purely, simply happiness."

He found it sort of - beautiful, in a way, that might sound strange but it's true, it's exactly what he thought, seeing the Founder King swept up like this.

"... Yeah," Nyx said, a little swept up himself - so swept up that he didn't notice what was so strange about the Founder King's last couple statements, "I - can imagine. Wow, that's. That's kind of - amazing. Actually."

Somnus simply nodded, smiling a tight-lipped smile.

"The others began to join after that, one right after the other, but I stopped noticing how long it took after my grandson arrived. For a long time, that made me... Happy."

He said that, again as if it were some foreign concept.

From that point on, the conversation became more casual, Somnus talked about his early descendants a little and Nyx engaged the only way he knew how to, talking about his little sister, and Libertus and Crowe. Though the memories were painful, though he didn't know if he would ever see his sister or Crowe again, it was... Nice, in a way. It didn't feel so crushing in that moment.

The night turned on, and eventually the two said their goodbyes for the next few hours, and Nyx left the Founder King to one of his many long naps.


End file.
